Matt has just co-authored a publication in Journal of the American Chemical Society with the Miller group at UNC resulting from some of his sabbatical work. The paper describes a powerful approach to switchable catalysis, where hydrogen bonding of a pendant crown ether to a bound ammine ligand can serve as a gate to catalysis that opens in the presence of cations that disrupt hydrogen bonding. The situation is analogous to biological systems, but this approach has not previously been demonstrated in synthetic systems. Congrats especially to Sebas, also to other Miller group members for their fantastic work!
Hot Paper!
Our recent paper on using cobalt silylenes as platforms for group-transfer reactions has been designated as a “Hot Paper” by Angewandte Chemie! This is awesome news, congratulations to all involved! The paper is also dedicated to the memory of Prof. Bob Grubbs, a true luminary in chemistry and a caring mentor to many generations of students, postdocs, and faculty (including Matt).
Another paper!
We have just published an invited critical review on metal/organosilicon interactions in Comments on Inorganic Chemistry with collaborator Prof. Buck Taylor (University of Portland). The paper uses fundamental principles to investigate structure and reactivity trends across many metal complexes with applications in catalysis. Check it out!
Cooperative CO2 Scission Paper is Out!
This one has been a long time coming, but it has been worth the wait! Check out this fantastic work in Organometallics by Jim Zhang ’18, Teddy Donnell ’17, Paul Peterson ’18, and Mike Trenerry ’18, as well as our awesome collaborators Prof. Buck Taylor (and student Vanessa Eng) and Prof. Daron Janzen. We provide experimental and computational evidence for silicon-assisted CO2 cleavage by an anomalous insertion mechanism, highlighting another mechanism by which silicon can play a key role in transforming CO2.
The Whited and Taylor labs explore how M–Si bonds can be tuned to direct CO2 insertion and enable C=O cleavage. Check the results here: https://t.co/TL2opVyVmh pic.twitter.com/9S79vlpIB9
— Organometallics (@Orgmet_ACS) November 12, 2019
New Organometallics Paper
Check out our recent collaborative work with Buck Taylor’s (University of Portland) lab on a combined experimental and computational approach to understanding unusual competitive mechanisms in alkene hydrogenation by Rh catalysts! This paper describes work by Kate DeMeulenaere ’18 and Mike Trenerry ’18. Congrats to all involved on this well-deserved recognition of some excellent work!
Cobalt Silylene!
We have just reported our collaborative work with the Ozerov group (Texas A&M) preparing the first example of a base-free cobalt silylene (cobalt-silicon double bond) in Organometallics. Congrats to Jim for his excellent work on this project and thanks to all our wonderful collaborators who contributed to the work.
New Paper in Polyhedron
Matt has published a new paper in Polyhedron with collaborators from USC addressing the role of isomerism in luminescent properties of cyclometalated iridium complexes relevant to organic LEDs.
New paper in Dalton
Our ruthenium work has just been published! Check out Binh, Jim, and Jason’s awesome work demonstrating silylene-assisted hydride transfer to CO2.